Description of Porcupine

﻿Agile and armed, although they may seem slow, a porcupine is quick to make its point with its defensive quills. Porcupines do not throw or cast their quills into a potential predator; instead, quills penetrate a predator's body on contact with the porcupine's prickly body. The more than thirty thousand quills on a porcupine's back and sides are actually modified hairs (one of the characteristics of mammals). Other common names of porcupines are quillpig and pricklepig. North American porcupines are arboreal or semiarboreal, spending much of their day climbing trees and consuming tree bark. These herbivores ingest a variety of plant materials, from buds to roots. On occasion, porcupines may eat shed antlers of deer or elk for the various minerals, such as calcium, that they contain. Second in size only to the beavers in the class Rodentia, adults porcupines weigh between four and six kilograms, although much larger ones have been reported. The length attained by adults ranges from about sixty to one hundred centimeters. While color variations occur, most individuals have dark colored pelage. Porcupines are mostly nocturnal, butmaybe observed during the day either on the ground or in trees.